"Dave Swindell" <Newsgroups@papercraft.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:XkyyABCu0WUTFw3S@papercraft.demon.co.uk...
> This Vickers Vimy, G-EAOU (affectionately known as "God 'Elp All Of Us"),
> was flown by the brothers Ross and Keith Smith, together with mechanics
> Jim Bennett and Wally Shiers, to victory in the 1919 England to Australia
> Air Race. In the process, they became the first people ever to fly from
> England to Australia.
<snippage>
> The aircraft is today preserved in a specially-built enclosure at Adelaide
> Airport.
> --
> Dave Swindell
Make that 'mostly' preserved....
http://peterlewisdesign.tripod.com/australia/classicaircraftadelaide.htm
I have an old email (somewhere) with more details, but essentially in 1957,
the RAAF transported the Vimy from Canberra to Adelaide on the back of two
low-loaders. The fuselage was on one with the wings and engines on
another.
In one of our classic "oh shit" moments, the driver of the 'wings and
engines' truck, flicked a cigarette butt out of his window, which was then
sucked into the load on the back. Within a couple of minutes, both wings,
engines and propellers were in their final state of black & crispy.
It took two years by (I believe) RAAF tradesmen and local volunteers to
reconstruct a new set of wings and engine nacelles, the props were
re-manufactured, using an original that was hanging over the bar in the RAAF
Pt Cook Officers' Mess. The plane looks magnificent, the rebuild is (I'm
told) outwardly identical to the original wings.
The Vimy was eventually housed in a purpose-built enclosure outside the
then-new airport terminal in Adelaide - around 1959. After a major
refurbishment in the '80s, the display building was enclosed at the front,
to prevent sunlight damaging the paintwork and fabric.
Now there's a new terminal at the airport and the display building is still
there, now it's a quieter area of the airport, not frequented by hordes of
mouth-breathing, camera-toting knuckle draggers.
--
Cheers
Dave Kearton
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